NOAA says – Hottest (Warmest) March on Record

I’m sure the press will make this into a much bigger story. This today from NOAA News. The choice of “hottest” in the title is interesting. We should ask our Canadian friends if it was “hot” during March, since Canada seems to be leading the world in “hotness” according to the NOAA image. – Anthony

The world’s combined global land and ocean surface temperature made last month the warmest March on record, according to NOAA. Taken separately, average ocean temperatures were the warmest for any March and the global land surface was the fourth warmest for any March on record. Additionally, the planet has seen the fourth warmest January – March period on record.

The monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis, which is based on records going back to 1880, is part of the suite of climate services NOAA provides government, business and community leaders so they can make informed decisions.

Global Temperature Highlights – March 2010

Temperature anomaly is the difference from average, which gives a more accurate picture of temperature change. In calculating average regional temperatures, factors like station location or elevation affect the data, but those factors are less critical when looking at the difference from the average.

The combined global land and ocean average surface temperature for March 2010 was the warmest on record at 56.3°F (13.5°C), which is 1.39°F (0.77°C) above the 20th century average of 54.9°F (12.7°C).

The worldwide ocean surface temperature was the highest for any March on record –1.01°F (0.56°C) above the 20th century average of 60.7°F (15.9°C).

Separately, the global land surface temperature was 2.45°F (1.36°C) above the 20th century average of 40.8 °F (5.0°C) — the fourth warmest on record. Warmer-than-normal conditions dominated the globe, especially in northern Africa, South Asia and Canada. Cooler-than-normal regions included Mongolia and eastern Russia, northern and western Europe, Mexico, northern Australia, western Alaska and the southeastern United States.

El Niño weakened to moderate strength in March, but it contributed significantly to the warmth in the tropical belt and the overall ocean temperature. According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, El Niño is expected to continue its influence in the Northern Hemisphere at least through the spring.

For the year-to-date, the combined global land- and ocean-surface temperature of 55.3°F (13.0°C) was the fourth warmest for a January-March period. This value is 1.19°F (0.66°C) above the 20th century average.

According to the Beijing Climate Center, Tibet experienced its second warmest March since historical records began in 1951. Delhi, India also had its second warmest March since records began in 1901, according to the India Meteorological Department.

Other Highlights

Arctic sea ice covered an average of 5.8 million square miles (15.1 million square kilometers) during March. This is 4.1 percent below the 1979-2000 average expanse, and the fifth-smallest March coverage since records began in 1979. Ice coverage traditionally reaches its maximum in March, and this was the 17th consecutive March with below-average Arctic sea ice coverage. This year the Arctic sea ice reached its maximum size on March 31st, the latest date for the maximum Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979.

Antarctic sea ice expanse in March was 6.9 percent below the 1979-2000 average, resulting in the eighth smallest March ice coverage on record.

In China, the Xinjiang province had its wettest March since records began in 1951, while Jilin and Shanghai had their second wettest March on record. Meanwhile, Guangxi and Hainan provinces in southern China experienced their driest March on record, according to the Beijing Climate Center.

Many locations across Ontario, Canada received no snow, or traces of snow, in March, which set new low snowfall records, according to Environment Canada.

Scientists, researchers, and leaders in government and industry use NOAA’s monthly reports to help track trends and other changes in the world’s climate. This climate service has a wide range of practical uses, from helping farmers know what and when to plant, to guiding resource managers with critical decisions about water, energy and other vital assets.

NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth’s environment, from the depths of the oceans to surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.

Im saying it was just a strange weather pattern this winter. Considering we had a foot+ of snow here in Arkansas Mid-March. It was fun though, kinda a last screw you! from winter. I had already installed the summer only tires on my car that day =/. The drive to work…well never happened I got stuck in the driveway… *sigh*

The last month or so has been unusually warm in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. This is just north of Minnesota. Given that this part of the country has long cold winters and is known for its late springs, we are enjoying the warmth. Long may it reign!

Hot button cold button. You ever fight with a family member over setting the thermostat? That’s the analogy. It has become a pathetic issue these temperature wars fought in virtual space where nothing manifests more than data streams. Sound and fury…

Yawn. Here in southwestern Alberta it has been a rather typical El Nino winter, more or less like all the other El Nino winters I have experienced in the >30 years I have lived here. That and about $1.25 (I think) will get you a cup of coffee. Unless you visit my office, I don’t charge.

16 April: WaPo: Steven Pearlstein: Congress worked out health care. Is climate change next?
Now, thanks to the heroic efforts of two dogged senators — Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham — and the quiet support of the White House, there looks to be a 50-50 chance the Senate will pass a simpler and more moderate version of a bill this year that would begin to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the United States..
While there are still some details to be ironed about, there is a good chance that the bill will gain the support of oil giants BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, along with major electric utilities and industrial corporations. There’s even a chance the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Petroleum Institute, heretofore implacable foes of climate legislation, will take a neutral stand on the Senate bill now that so many of their concerns have been addressed and so many of their members find the measure acceptable. ..
In the end, if Congress is unable to do something about global warming, it won’t be because of the opposition of “special interests,” but rather because of ideological zealots and Republican partisans who are determined to deny Democrats another victory, even at the cost of a planetary environmental disaster.http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/15/AR2010041505755.html?hpid=topnews

This is the first year in a long time that we have actually had somewhat of a spring. A rather dry spring but the temperature has been mild for once. Last several years it has been going from 20F to about 85F in the span of a couple of weeks.

Went to a storm spotter training class in Feb and they stated it was the first February that the state of Indiana has never seen a tornado. Usually we are reminded of how violent weather can be every couple of days. I rather enjoy the quietness coming from the civil defense siren a block away.

Not hot up here this March, just nice and warm compared to most. I could use a March like this every year and I’m sure the wildlife/farms/crops would love it too…with a little more rain to go with it, that is.

As I’ve attempted to point out on a number of occasions here, no one ever gets to experience climate, only weather. The past winter was a perfect example as vast parts of the NH had the kind of winter that hadn’t been seen for years, while the AMSU LT temps were almost constantly at or above 20 year highs. Whatever does transpire in the future climate, what you see for weather where you live will in all probability be well within the range it has occupied. Indeed, there appears to be significant evidence that the weather is actually getting less extreme as the climate has warmed.

In Toronto, March was indeed very warm. We’ve had a couple of days above 20 degrees celsius. I’ve had the top down on the car for at least five days (of course, I drop the top when the sun is shining and it’s 14 celsius. Anecdotally, our snowbird neighbours have returned from Florida with far fewer skin lesions and much lighter complexions overall. In general, we had very little snow this winter.

I blame myself, I bought a new snowblower this year. I think there’s an 18 to 24 month no-snow amortization period when you make that kind of investment. ;-)

March came ‘in like a lamb’ and I wouldn’t say ‘out like a lion’ but it wasn’t as pleasant. Warmest on record … something isn’t right there. Even if I consider Southern Ontario, I remember winters with no snow in the 80’s and then they just cruised into an early spring.

I wouldn’t call it unusual and we definately had a warmer spring in the 80’s where the trees in central Alberta were green at this time. The frost is still in the ground in places now although the trees are starting to bud out.

The best thing to look at is http://www.gasalberta.com/pricing-supply.htm and you can tell by how the vanishing US Storage it was cold South of the 48th and despite lower production Canadian Storage stayed high so it wasn’t the cruelist winter. Then you look like at the ‘degree day’ graphs and it doesn’t look like March was unusual by any extent on the prairies anyway.

All you have to do is imagine how they would compile something like this and then you have to wonder why do they bother making such a silly meaningless statement.

December had the coldest day in my life in it (record) but the entire month wasn’t totally brutish and March was nice but I’ve seen it green by now in the past (mid April). How you quantify that with a number … I don’t know.

Well, Canada, at least the Easterly bit, was mild, and it was appreciated by all. However, I am skeptical of the Big Red Blob, given that there are VERY FEW meteological stations in that area and, in general, the fewer the stations, the warmer it gets.

The record warmth depends upon several things:

1) Lack of historical temperature sequences
2) A strong El Nino – just wait ’til it becomes La Nina in August
3) Period of observation.

It is ironical that to truly measure a global change in temperature trend, one must measure the temperature trend of millenia, but the AGWers cannot do that because the measurements show higher temps previously. However, short period averages fall victim to their own argument that a short term change is just noise, not trend.

Question for these equivocating scum-bags: What is the ideal period of time over which a true global temperature trend could be measured? It’s in your court.

Yes, it was an unusually warm month for Quebec, but back to normal now. The earlier spring was munition to warmists, although apart from the media and environmentalists, everyone enjoyed it. We even saved a lot of money in Montreal with less snow to pick and reduced heating costs.

Of course, no word about El Nino, but they sure did blame CO2 for it (and enviro-freaks asked for bigger cuts in GHG), like they did for the lack of snow at the olympics.

H.M.S. Unbelievable sail again.
No hot weather on several of those No. Calif. red dots.
Not even warm. Rained, snowed, hailed, cold fog, very few sunny days, cold winds. People complaining “When is Spring going to get here?”

The credibility of this report is dubious at best.
All those storms slamming into the East, Midwest, right down into the South.
It looked like and acted like weather straight out of the 70’s.
Does NOAA think that people cannot remember what the weather was last month? Apparently so.

What really catches my eye out of graphs like that is that there is very little ‘normal’ in them. Someone got carried away with the -adjustment factor- , eh?

Here in Ft Myers, Florida, it was the coldest March in history. We lost half the citrus crop. It was 50s & 60s, did not ever hit 70, where the average was 80 in March. My avocado tree just barely survived – even though I am on an island in the Gulf that is protected from freezes unlike the interior mainland.

Good news, though – all the feral boas and pythons that had escaped as pets died. We lost the islands only crocodile – she was 12 feet and weigh 1/2 ton, an about 40 years old. Iguanas (escaped pets, again) dropped from the trees from the cold.

16 April: WaPo: Steven Pearlstein: Congress worked out health care. Is climate change next?
Now, thanks to the heroic efforts of two dogged senators — Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham — and the quiet support of the White House, there looks to be a 50-50 chance the Senate will pass a simpler and more moderate version of a bill this year that would begin to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the United States..

*A cost-effective process has been worked-out over the past several years for the identification/selection of the right feedstocks, the transportation (incl. the withdrawl of source stock from premises holding tanks), the filtering/decanting of said ‘oil’ into usable fuel …

Up here in Edmonton we had a nice March and an early spring, and our golf course opened on April 8, which is early. It also closed on April 8 because that same afternoon a storm blew in from the north and we got snow and freezing temperatures.

But if this year’s unusually early opening is proof of something, what was last year’s unusually late opening proof of?

and they have a 5 C rise in Canada from a 1971-2000 baseline. So in 25 years from the midpoint of the baseline (1985) we’ve in theory been rising at 1 C per 5 years? They actually believe that? Somehow I sense a “jump the shark” moment forming….

show the same Canada center as warming in the 4-8.5 range (with a band of 3-4 C around it) from a 1951-1980 baseline. So, roughly the same 5C but over 45 years.

I think they need to get there stories straight…

They both show Latin America in the 1-2 C range (if I’m reading the charts correctly) and they show Pakistan and North Africa at about the same.

Gee… Australia too…

Somehow I get the feeling that what we have here is some buggered data after 1990 that puts a constant hockey blade on the end of the stick… Seems there was no warming from 1950 to 1990 based on the A/B comparison of these two maps (though a more detailed data comparison would be a better test than just ‘eyeball the graphs’).

But as a ‘first look': I see a shark, and a guy on a board in the air…

Just south of Calgary, my climate station March Average was 3.3 (normal -1.1C), yes, a very nice march, but then again, 1992 was also 3.3 here, 1991 was 3.1, so nothing extreme, wonderful el-nino spring!!! Bring it on, beats cold anyday!

After a ‘limited snow’ Olympics, Vancouver has had some major dumps… it has been quite cold. The local mountains are extending their seasons a couple of weeks, in order to accomodate seasons passholders. My lawn cutting guy is crying the blues, because he is having to curtail his cuttings. Who knew?

As you can see from the 1999 red line in the above linked Vostok Ice Core Graph it has been MUCH HOTTER than it is now and that we’re NOT DOOMED as AL would like to see us GORED. Conclusive evidence that we’re not doomed, well not by CO2 anyway…. maybe an asteroid…. now that would make the hottest month on record… oh wait we’ve already had a few of those hits too… hmm…

Alberta was definitely warmer … I have pictures sitting on my deck in mid April with a bunch of friends and there was still two feet of snow in the fields, this year the field have been bare for weeks except in the shadows of the trees.

But then we usually get these little storms right into May. The highs in my area north of Rocky Mountain House has been a few degrees above normal for a few weeks.

But if you look at the record highs and lows for this region for specific dates, it is pretty hard to define “normal” The record lows and the record highs can be 50 or 60 degrees Centigrade apart …. record March low was 42.2 degrees below; the record high was Plus 27 – 69 degree variance – pick anything in between.

Halfwise;
Up here in Edmonton we had a nice March and an early spring, and our golf course opened on April 8, which is early. It also closed on April 8 because that same afternoon a storm blew in from the north and we got snow and freezing temperatures.
But if this year’s unusually early opening is proof of something, what was last year’s unusually late opening proof of>>

Hmmm… hasn’t golf been around for like 300 years or more? I don’t suppose the club records for opening day would be available that far back? Because that would make for an interesting climate proxy, would it not?

It appears from the unfudged data that it hasn’t warmed. So your comments about milder weather or whatever due to warming is bunk.

The graph I referenced showed that the oughts had fewer monthly maxes and mins than any decade since the 1880s and the numbers declining severely from the 1980s. It is certainly possible to argue that there has been no warming at all over those timespans, but even with the numerous malfeasances exposed in the climate community, I think that’s a hard case to make.

So far, the year is much warmer than the two warmest years on record – 2007 and 2009.

How’s that Arctic sea ice coming along ? Dropping down towards Lowest Summer on Record again ?
That’s a shame – some people said the March sea ice growth would be some sort of ‘tipping point’ back to normalcy.

Temperature anomaly is the difference from average, which gives a more accurate picture of temperature change.

Temperature anomaly is the difference from average, which gives a more accurate picture of temperature change. In calculating average regional temperatures, factors like station location or elevation affect the data, but those factors are less critical when looking at the difference from the average.

Any truth in this, particularly the last sentence, or is the anomaly a convenient amplification of change ?

16 April: WaPo: Steven Pearlstein: Congress worked out health care. Is climate change next?
Now, thanks to the heroic efforts of two dogged senators — Democrat John Kerry and Republican Lindsey Graham — and the quiet support of the White House, there looks to be a 50-50 chance the Senate will pass a simpler and more moderate version of a bill this year that would begin to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the United States..

It l0oks like the “moderate version” will concentrate on “clean energy” rather than carbon footprints per se. Credit Lindsey Graham for this. To sum up the reasoning in two words, try Duke Power.

On the issue of GiSS data for Finland, checking out the Finnish OGIMET transmitted CLIMAT data, in the WMO coded CLIMAT portion (see ) the mean max/min temp data entry for Sodankyla on line 111 group 4, was transmitted correctly as 410371175 which decodes to a mean max of -3.7°C and a mean min of -17.5°C. The error came from GISS. There was no problem on the CLIMAT portion of the of the message transmitted by Finland.

There may not be problem with GISS “quality control” at all; that is if you accept Gavin’s interpretation of the term, :)

Well, I can’t speak for the CAGW groupies ( http://tinyurl.com/yemj8dj ) but personally, it would be fun if the summer melt ended up below 2009 levels – I enjoy hearing all the “spin” as to why the Arctic losing its summer ice soon is “natural”:

If I have to wait till 2011 or 2012, not so fun.

Look at that 2008 sea ice extent dive, starting within the “gray area” – things can happen fast in a warm Arctic… and CryoSat-2 will be watching the whole time. I wonder what happens when “the warmest oceans on record” flow up under the Arctic egg-shell-thin sea ice cap.
We’ll see by October.

I live in Florida, and it was miserably cold here. The coldest winter in decades. March was much cooler than usual, and now that spring has arrived and it has warmed up, everyone is remarking on the pleasant difference.

NOAA must be fudging the numbers, as usual. It doesn’t matter whether it’s freezing or boiling, NOAA always declares every month the hottest on record. But, which record? The one they started two years ago, the one they started five years ago, the one they started three weeks ago? The revised one, two, three, four?

Here’s a thought. If 30 years is climate, and you want to measure climate change, why wouldn’t you be taking the average of thirty years for your anomaly? Isn’t this an exercise in futility, this strange practice of comparing weather to climate?

The image sure shows Canada melting off the planet. Vancouver was a normal winter with a false spring during the Winter Olympics and then it got cooler! Naturally! It’s only starting to be as warm again. Just another warmish wet winter in Vancouver. Plenty of those.

What I’m curious about is both NOAA and Environment Canada are alleging that Canada is now a northern tropical destination with one of the hottest winters on record… I’d love to know how they figure that out.

Where is the temperature data?

Just how many thermometers are they using?

Canada is HUGE at 9,984,670 km2 or 3,854,085 sq mi. Bigger than China with only Russia being bigger (by a lot actually).

How many temperature stations?

How many square kilometers are of this NOAA Image is FABRICATED with INTERPOLATED data?

We need to extend the surface stations project into Canada as well, even if it’s just to locate with GPS coordinates where the temperature sensors are. Or are they using a satellite to make these measurements?

Another thing. Each of those dots represents a different grid, right? Is the global anomaly the value used in the grid box? Or the mean for the grid box is used?

This whole exercise looks like someone is trying to make inferences about the means of many different populations. If that is the case, since you end up with a μ differential that includes zero, you cannot say that there has been any statistically significant warming.

If the global anomaly is used in each grid box, that would have to be justified also, imho. If the gridbox anomaly is used, these are all separate populations, and since you have positive and negative results, you cannot say the change is statistically different from 0.

Look at that 2008 sea ice extent dive, starting within the “gray area” – things can happen fast in a warm Arctic… and CryoSat-2 will be watching the whole time. I wonder what happens when “the warmest oceans on record” flow up under the Arctic egg-shell-thin sea ice cap.
We’ll see by October.

I’ve only ever found three studies of the sea ice flux through the Fram that appeared close to reliable. The first went back to the fifties but the methodology wasn’t based on measurements but modeled estimations. The other two were derived from satellite data, but only go back the middle to late nineties. The thing they all share is that, though they note the rather large variability of the flux, they all claim the mean VOLUME of the flux has been quite stable and they arrive at numbers for that mean value that are similar.

My question would be, since you seem to believe the Arctic ice has become egg shell thin from its more robust thickness in the eighties, wouldn’t the mean volume of the flux staying consistent require that the mean area increase by whatever factor of thickness reduction you postulate?

Actually I’m probably in the minority around here, because I too suspect there has been a significant decline in ice thickness in the Arctic, but i suspect the proper villain is as described by Rigor and Wallace in this work

That is a dramatic shift in the Beaufort Gyre and the Transpolar Drift which occurred in the late eighties took out almost all of the often decades old ice that had filled most of the Arctic west of the Pole.

This shift may relate to the shift in the AO that also occurred around that time or maybe not. At any rate I have seen no reasonable argument to suggest it was caused by anthropogenically generated CO2.

rbateman (19:52:35) :No hot weather on several of those No. Calif. red dots.
Not even warm. Rained, snowed, hailed, cold fog, very few sunny days, cold winds.
Petaluma pretty miserable too overall. And Stanford, too. An informal weather indicator is my plot of the Solar Mean Field, the purple dots and curve on http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png Where the curve is broken there were no observation on that day [=lousy weather].

let’s subtract about half a degree to adjust for el nino,
half the remaining land based anomaly due to noaa’s notorious neglect to correct for UHI
and subtract another 0.3 deg for the error in 1941/1942 bucket/inlet adjustment.

Am I mising something here, or do they consider the first 3 years of the satellite record for sea ice extent to be the “normal”, and everything else since has been “abnormal”?
“Arctic sea ice covered an average of 5.8 million square miles (15.1 million square kilometers) during March. This is 4.1 percent below the 1979-2000 average expanse, and the fifth-smallest March coverage since records began in 1979. Ice coverage traditionally reaches its maximum in March, and this was the 17th consecutive March with below-average Arctic sea ice coverage”
If this was the “17th consecutive March with below-average sea ice coverage”, but records only began 20 years ago, then only the 3 or 4 previous Marches were used as the baseline? Maybe those 3 years were just way above average??
PS it has been unseasonably cold in Southern California!

We need a basis on just what is meant by: Hottest March on Record. Why? Because we need to understand our belief that Man is Destroying the Planet with CO2…high time to check those historic thermometer readings as we see them crescendoing into the “Hottest March on Record”.

“Hottest March on Record” – that sounds important – it comes from an important-sounding US Government Agency-note to self: “this is really big news”. How big is big?

Hmmm…really…hottest March…How hot is hottest March compared to say Coldest March, Colder March, Cold March, Average March, Hot March, Hotter March, and finally – Hottest March on Record. Hey – why limit ourselves to adjectives – why not compare temperature rankings of all Marches having had a thermometer inserted; then we’ll really get a flair and feeling for our belief that AGW is destroying earth by making March so hot.

Let’s get to work! We need to know just how hot the Hottest March on Record really is so we can compute (to a high degree of precision) the AGW Earth Destruction Index, or AGWEDI – a desperately needed, highly subjective metric to qualify, to ourselves, important (sounding) statements coming from important (sounding) government agencies like NOAA. But our metric has to have at least the same appearance of precision as NOAH assigns to temperature anomalies; and sticking to land surface temperatures so we can incorporate EM Smith’s valuable work on surface temperatures showing how utterly jacked they are, let’s quote NOAA on land surface temperatures:

“Separately, the global land surface temperature was 2.45°F (1.36°C) above the 20th century average of 40.8 °F (5.0°C) — the fourth warmest on record.”

Wait a minute, “fourth warmest on record for land”…and I so, so, so wanted to incorporate EM Smith’s work on land thermometer records – what!!! I thought “March is Warmest on Record” and now the land records are only the fourth warmest on record? Talk about a let down. Note to self: “And I thought AGW stuff was pretty simple – warm, warmer, warmest… you know…thermometer readings…man-made warming…destroying the planet…we’ll car-pool, recycle, we’ll save the planet; simple stuff.”

Let us not be distracted from our goal: assign a significant number of digits to the AGWEDI so fourth warmest, warmest, whatever, we can start our (important) work. Let’s see: “global land surface temperature was 2.45°F above the 20th century average of 40.8 °F.” Three significant digits – were’re making progress. But doesn’t the record go back to 1885? What’s with the “20th century average” stuff? Oh well, it’s only 15 years difference and what’s that in geologic time anyhow?

Back to work. Now that NOAA has kindly supplied the average land temperatures back to 1885 or 1900; wherever we decide to start, the next question is “what is the standard deviation between temperatures?” Why ask? Well, if our goal is to establish the AGWEDI to any degree of certainty, we need to know how hot is hottest. But in all honesty, we also need to know the uncertainty of the temperature readings as well. I looked on NOAA’s website and couldn’t find any references to standard deviation or measurement tolerance/uncertainty – and temperatures are resolved to three digits. It must be there somewhere. One hundredth of a degree is quite precise. Details, details. I’ll work on them later as this post is already too long. I can also take a shot at instrument bias from work done by EM Smith and others later.

Anyhow, if we really knew how much hotter, hottest March is within a standard deviation of the average; and we knew the uncertainty of the measurement, it would be a simple task to calculate AGWEDI.

Simply assign a value between 0 and 1 to AGW; 0 being skeptical and 1 being true believer. EDI is a set of multipliers consisting of the standard deviation of average temperatures times (on a scale of 0 to 1) the belief that moderately rising temperature anomolies spell the end of Earth, times confidence in UN IPCC reports, times confidence in “Settled Climate Science”, times confidence in MSM predicted effects of AGW, times certainty that man-made CO2 causes all temperature anomolies, times a personal factor you can just fill in at will since after all, it’s your subjective rating.

Below is a table of global monthly temperatures anomalies, compared to the from the 1979/98 average, from UAH. As can be seen, the El Nino effect starts to kick in around September last year.

Also from UAH, discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/

In March this year, this UAH chart showed average daily temperatures between 0.9 and 1.3 degrees F higher than last March last year. Yesterday the figure was 0.28 degrees F (0.15 degrees C) higher than the comparable date last year.

The effect of the latest El Nino is starting to wane and it is now looking like global temperatures will return to near ‘normal’ in the not too distant future – however, do not expect to see a commentary to this effect on any alarmist website.

According to the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium at Uccle (near Brussels), the mean air temperature at Uccle in March 2010 was 6.7 deg Celsius, while the ‘normal’ for March is 5.5. I don’t know to what period this normal refers; maybe to the period 1961-1990.
Anyway, there have been warmer March months at Uccle previously. For example, the monthly mean was 8.0 deg C in March 2007, and 8.8 in March 2003. Farther in the past, we had 8.5 deg C in March 1948, and even 9.6 in March 1957.

Let them keep saying this, because the public will get ever more sceptical of AGW. It was certainly NOT the warmest on record for millions of people in the N Hemisphere, and that is what they feel and understand.

When we were young, we had a lot of fun making unreasonable sentences, Nonsense Sentences.

Many times, now again by NOAA, we must listen to such Nonsense Sentences. “March this year was the warmest (hottest) since begin of record.”

It is obvious that this is a Nonsense Sentence.
As all of us know we are just escaping the Little Ice Age, which took place between 1300 and 1850. We find ourselves at comfortable warm temperatures and climate conditions of the Modern Climate Optimum.
By the way we are the first human generation which fears optimal climate.

“Ask” people living during the Medieval or Roman climate optimum, what they would like to choose; surely not the Little Ice Age conditions.

The temperature record e. g. by NASA GISS is beginning 1880. Therefore necessarily the last ten years with nearly constant or slightly decreasing temperature anomalies are, thanks God, the warmest since.

Imagine you go out of your house on a cold winter morning. You take a thermometer with you and record every hour the temperature: -8, -7 …-4, -6,-8 °C up to 6 pm. Finally you come home in your hopefully comfortable warm house. You continue measuring +20, +20,5, +20, +20,7 °C.

What do you belief the last two hours will show us? The “hottest” temperature since record started!

This is a Nonsense Sentence!
The same as
“at night it is cooler than outside”,
“March 2010 is the hottest since record”.

The regrettable situation here is, that these are scientists, who would like us to believe, that this makes sense. They want to scare us and to believe in their alarmist view of anthropogenic climate change.

It is nothing but hot air, especially if you consider that in addition we are in an El Nino regime. Compare 1998!

If this was the “17th consecutive March with below-average sea ice coverage”, but records only began 20 years ago, then only the 3 or 4 previous Marches were used as the baseline? Maybe those 3 years were just way above average??

I understand where you are coming from but you have missed something.

Sattelite records began 31 years ago. It is just that they have only taken the average from the first 21 years. So they are basically saying that the last 17 years have seen a fair bit less ice than the first 14.

However I still think there is a deception hidden in the way the figures are presented.

If one assumes the 60 year cycle of ocean temperatures we would expect minum ice every 60 years with max ice 30 years before each peak. Anecdotally at least, we know arctic ice was very low in the forties and fifties; WUWT has reprinted newspaper articles to that effect. So it is entirely consistent with natural cycles to see a max ice around 1980 and a new minimum around 2010.

If you plot this cyclical pattern as a sign wave you would get exactly the pattern of observations that has been observed. So what is the big deal?

Indeed the speed by which Arctic seems to be recovering from minimum ice seems to suggest that the prevailing trend may well be negative now. If I was a betting man I would be more concerned about getting colder than getting hotter.

While its generally been above average here in March, the rest of the winter has been distinctly below normal by a significant margin, with snow cover above normal and zero thaw in January, contrary to normal.

To add to my last post. It is worth looking at how sine (sorry about the typo in the first post “sign wave”!) waves work reference averages because there is room for more hysteria to come.

If you have a sine wave with a period of 60 years, going between +1 to -1 say, and you start measuring at the +1 point on the cycle you will find that the measured value will decline for 30 years and will therefore always be below the average. At the end of 30 years the measurement will be at -1 and the average will be 0. The average will then continue to decline as more of the cold cycle is included but it will be several years before the actual exceeds it. So it is entirely consistent with normal cycles to have nearly 40 years of ice “below average” as long as you start measuring at the “right” time. Which is exactly what they have done.

I installed a Davis weather station at my home at the beginning of the year and spent a great deal of care insuring it is well calibrated. Here’s a good set of numbers for you:

According to NOAA,The average CDD and HDD (Cooling and Heating Degree Days) for the last 30 years for February in Tampa, Florida were 59/136 (CDD/HDD). Tampa is around 25-miles away inland from us so they run a little colder without the stabilizing effect of the Gulf water temperatures.

Here in Sudbury in Northern Ontario, March was nice and warm. We had maybe a half dozen record breaking highs and a few nights that did not go below the normal high. It was warm. We also only received 1.4 mm of precipitation. Normal is around 65 mm. Forest fire warnings abound in March. Indeed, we have been rather warm since late January. This week we are again 4 to 7 C above normal. It is great.

The question should be ‘Is industrialization and its economic and atmospheric consequences making the world less habitable for humans and the animals on which they depend?’ Answer: No way. It certainly is not. Because the concept of habitability is akin to that of a resource in that they both combine the given of nature and the got of expanding human knowledge. The world is becoming, on net, ever more habitable as human know-how and can-do increases.

How much oil reserves had the cavemen? Far less the we do today. To know what use can be made of something and how to get the something or cheaper substitutes is the ultimate resource. And additions to this knowledge are limitless. See Julian Simon and W W Bartley to start.

As has been said: ‘The stone age didn’t end because people ran out of stones’.

Damage control time. We are coming out of a brutal winter and people are starting not to believe the garbage being sold. So in a desperate attempt to make people think it is still worse than we thought, NOAA comes out with a “hottest ever” report.

I will buy that it was a warm March globally. The brightness temperature of the TLT channel seems to be around the same as the 1998 El Nino from the RSS site. However, by not stating that this was an El Nino event and that it followed brightness temperatures that were below the average from 1980 is grossly misleading to the average person.

SusanP (23:53:19) :
Am I mising something here, or do they consider the first 3 years of the satellite record for sea ice extent to be the “normal”, and everything else since has been “abnormal”?

…
If this was the “17th consecutive March with below-average sea ice coverage”, but records only began 20 years ago, then only the 3 or 4 previous Marches were used as the baseline? Maybe those 3 years were just way above average??
I think the batteries on your calendar are dead.
It’s 2010 now – satellite records on Arctic sea ice began 31 years ago.

The 21st century is pretty much same old same old – oh, the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004 and 2007. Otherwise, you didn’t miss much.

Mongolia is having possibly their coldest spring on record, with many people unable to sustain themselves – but NOAA apparently didn’t find that bit of news interesting. They are more interested in the fact that unpopulated areas of Canada aren’t quite as cold as it usually is.

Warmest on record? Depends upon how you calculate it. Daily high? Average of high and low? How many times a day were temperatures recorded? How was the data processed? Has the methodology changed since they began recording temperatures?

AndyW (22:20:11) :
Has the UAH temp graph for March been put on here yet? I might have missed it.

Andy

I has indeed and even with its ‘corrections’ it shows the warmest March on its records, similarly for RSS. The two surface measurements reported so far NOAA and Gisstemp show similar results.
So despite the anecdotal cold weather being reported March appears to have been exceptionally warm (NJ had a record high a week or so ago, over 90ºF or more than 20ºF above normal so it hasn’t been cold everywhere).

I recently saw a graph of Arctic Ocean water temperature. That for the year 2007 was noticeably warm. I believe more than coincidence considering the amount of ice that disappeared that year. I normally archive exciting finds like that, but just now could not find the graph to make a point related to a posting here today. If anyone can remember where to find that graph, kindly send it to me at imcqueen (at) nbnet.nb.ca or post it here.

I inadvertently hit the Tab key and sent the previous message before I had got to the subject of recent weather. In southern New Brunswick, and in eastern (Maritime) Cnada in general), it was an unusually mild winter and spring. The amont of snowfall through the winter was considerably less than usual, which cut my plowing bill to about a third of usual, and the lesser amont of snow in the woods has limited the rise of water in the annual spring freshet. Instead of the usual high water here, considerably less of my land has been covered this year and the water appears to be retreating now. (Every year some ducks swim around over what is dry land the rest of the year. Recently it’s been five racously-colored wood ducks.)

Damn that Tab key! I just hit it by accident and my incomplete and non-proofread message got sent out prematurely. I wish it could be disabled as a way to send a posting!
Anyway, as I was saying, the winter was unusually mild in this part of the world (eastern Canada). I suspect that it was an ENSO phenomenon and that next winter will be all too normal. (Canada’s chief meteorologist pronounced this the mildest winter on record.)
I put out a hummingbird feeder on the 15th because the birds have already been spotted in adjacent Maine and Nova Scotia. This is a few weeks ahead of normal, which would describe all natural phenomena, like tree budding, snow melting, golf course opening, etc., etc. We’ll enjoy it while we can!

And I want to say that WUWT is so great for bringing together an international community of posters. Where else could we get first-hand reports on conditions in so many parts of the USA, Canada, Australia-NZ, Japan, and other parts of the world?

pwl (20:38:18) :
Doomed nope. Highest March on record? Nope, the Vostok Ice Core Data has plenty of other March’s on record that were warmer.

How can they get a way saying it’s the “warmest March on the record” when it’s a blatant false statement? Clearly they need to clarify their statement so that it is honest and accurate.

More “skeptical” hysteria, based on sloppy reading.
Read the article above:The monthly National Climatic Data Center analysis, which is based on records going back to 1880,

Or read the actual report:http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/?report=globalMarch 2010
The combined global land and ocean surface temperature anomaly for March 2010 was 0.77°C (1.39°F) above the 20th century average, resulting in the warmest March since records began in 1880.

The fact that Milankovitch cycles and Earth climate system feedbacks caused a warmer March 125,000 years ago says nothing about how quickly we are changing the temperature now by dumping gigatons of CO2 into the atmosphere. If a forest burned down 125,000 years ago, due to lightning, where your house stands now, that doesn’t protect you from burning down your house by smoking in bed. As the fire begins in your bed, saying “this is nothing, it was much hotter here 125,000 years ago” is no solution to putting out the fire.

Here we had snow in March. At Sea Level. And it’s damning cold right now and we’re in Mid-April! This is damned Spain, for God’s sake! I wonder how cold is gonna get once the El Niño is finished. I don’t think I can stand another year this cold. Maybe I should move to Canada.

On the March data for each year alone? Surely we would use the entire monthly annual data across the time span before we could make such a bold statement. The trend, if we include the entire 97/98 El Nino and include this march is about +0.2. If I were you I would show caution about using phrases like “red herring is dead now”. Using the time span we have here gives a volatile trend line, that can flip from positive to negative over a period of months.

I don’t trust my trend line generator so please try to confirm my graph with an independent source.

Funny how the El Nino’s keep getting warmer and warmer, just like those crackpot climatologists predicted…

This El Nino is not warmer than 97/98 and nor have the ones been between.

In my estimation 2010 will not be warmer than 1998. The high global anom temp figures over the first three months are a product of the timing of the El Nino and in them selves say nothing about probable outcome of the annualized figure.

Funny, but I suspect if we’d experienced the coolest March in 100 years, that it would be the #1 topic on every AGW skeptic blog for days on end. Having a record warm March 2010 is completely in line with general AGWT, so it is not the hot topic for those who think it is likely that AGW is happening.

BTW, it seems the March “bump up” in Arctic sea ice, which was mainly the Bering sea is melting fast as predicted, as it was very thin ice, only 4 to 12 inches and was caused by a lingering negative AO condition, that’s faded now as the spring thaw has really kicked in. To see how fast the March “bump up” in sea ice in the Bering sea is now melting, see :

John from CA (09:15:24) : “An international law needs to be passed limiting climate science to colors that do not use Red.”

Unfortunately, I think there is still so much support for the catastrophic global warming hypothesis, especially in international organizations, I expect the possibility of passing any law controlling this type of propaganda is probably quite low.

I think we should keep in mind that there still are a lot of people out there who really believe that catastrophic global warming is a serious danger to the world. The elite press seems to be saying that there is no reason to delay addressing this problem, now that the climate scientists have been fully cleared of all technical wrong-doing. New momentum also seems to be building up for Congress to finally pass the ‘Cap and Trade’ bill.

‘Sifted thru 100+ respones. Not one of them made a constructive scientific argument against.’

ROFL!

Are you completely mental? You’re not an actual denier are you?

World has, as far as can be ascertained, accumulatively warmed since the last ice age, period.

The questions are by how much, and what percentage is by man, or by Mann, and what percentage is natural, in the whole warming process.

And of course there’s the whole pot of disgustingly gooey hairy things that everyone has a problem with too, like just which manner you splice and dice, tree readers, half retired satellites that should’ve gone where no satellite has gone before already, population growth around temperature apparatus’, half baked scientists, non-caring people taking temperature reading for the weather but the readings is used to describe climate, et cetera et al.

Essentially it’s a matter of parts of a degree, rather than being for or against.

I am a long time reader of WUWT but a first time poster. I happened to be up in Iqaluit on Baffin Island on Wednesday. The temperature was -16c along with a very strong north wind and Baffin Bay was completely covered over by sea ice. As this was only my second time there I cannot say if it is any warmer or colder than normal for this time of year, but for sure no one was going to go and throw a few shrimp on the barbi that afternoon!!! (even if they could have found it under the snow)
Owen.

Just click on the “open in Google Earth” links. If you have trouble setting up your browser to do it automatically, just download the .kmz file and drag/drop it on a running Google Earth (which is free from Google: http://earth.google.com/ )

Seeing the data on a scalable, rotatable globe is better than any 2D projection.
They also have some .kmz files which allow data “movies” to be played on Google Earth, showing data changing over time.

A combination of man-made global warming and a moderate warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as El Niño, means it is very likely that 2010 will be a warmer year globally than 2009.

Recently released figures confirm that 2009 is expected to be the fifth-warmest year in the instrumental record that dates back to 1850.

The latest forecast from our climate scientists, shows the global temperature is forecast to be almost 0.6 °C above the 1961–90 long-term average. This means that it is more likely than not that 2010 will be the warmest year in the instrumental record, beating the previous record year which was 1998.

From the ScienceDaily article:Trenberth and Fasullo estimate that, based on satellite data, the amount of energy build-up appears to be about 1.0 watts per square meter or higher, while ocean instruments indicate a build-up of about 0.5 watts per square meter. That means about half the total amount of heat is unaccounted for.
That’s for looking at the oceans down to 700m.
Looking down to 2000m, other scientists see an oceanic warming of 0.77 ± 0.11 Wm−2
Once they start measuring under the polar sea ice, maybe that goes to 0.85 or 0.90. Add in down to 3000m, maybe we’ll see 0.94

But he’s right, the current Argo armada is just a start. It could be higher resolution, it could go deeper and take more data, and it is missing a lot of ocean area at the poles. Eventually, they will see exactly where all that imbalanced radiation caused by CO2 increases is going.

Bill Tuttle (13:58:12) :
R. Gates (11:11:34) :
BTW, it seems the March “bump up” in Arctic sea ice, which was mainly the Bering sea is melting fast as predicted…

I’d be more concerned if it *wasn’t* melting.

——

I wouldn’t be concerned either way…a short term up or down does not a climate make…the longest term trend over the biggest area of the earth is the most accurate indicator of climate. Short term dips or bounces are just noise. My point in mentioning it is that much was made of the March “bump up”, so that we had pundits like Rush Limbaugh even talking about it, as though it meant anything.

MartinGAtkins; thanks, you responded appropriately to Anu who is nothing if not busy and subtle with his[?] use of official data tools. Anu says this:

“Did I mention the different baselines ? 2000-2008 vs. 1971-2000″

That was my point Anu, the March 2010 has more cool anomalies than the base period post 2000, so how can it be the warmest on record?

A couple of other crucial points; the use of anomalies is a recipe for distortion and manipulation and is possibly most responsible for the AGW hysteria; anomalies are variations from a base period mean; if that base period is in a cool period then anomalies before and after which are in [naturally] warm periods will be distorted and show a false trend. GISS and Hadcrut have used weightings of 0.24 and 0.15 respectively but that simple tool ignores natural factors like volcanoes and PDO as this graph shows;

The blue line is the temperature trend with PDO removed and the green line is the Hadcrut base line trend.

Finally Anu has a shot at the ‘myth’ that temps have been going down since 1998; explain this Anu:

David M Hoffer,
>Hmmm… hasn’t golf been around for like 300 years or more?
>I don’t suppose the club records for opening day would be
>available that far back? Because that would make for an
>interesting climate proxy, would it not?

Our club opened about 80 years ago. I asked the question…and so far have received no answer…about when the record earliest opening day was. April 8 is earlier than any date in the past 10 years, which tells us little or nothing.

But it is historical fact that the 1930s were a hot decade here in Alberta. Any daily record that happens to get broken by our UHI-tainted devices these days seems to be from the 1930s, or occasionally the 1880s.

Concerning baselines, but it’s rather more prudent and accurate to include the year in the baseline you’re using to compare against, otherwise it doesn’t make much sense, unless you warp the context out of proportions.

bubbagyro; thanks for the heads up about Anu; I guessed as much and have had some experience with such luminaries as sod and good old luke. Anu’s point about heat below 700 metres in the oceans is a crucial one because with not enough warming being shown atmospherically and on land the AGW alarmists need the pipeline effect and equlibrium sensitivity to validate their cockeyed theory. Cointegration has knocked ES around but the deep heat issue needs to be resolved. As for El Ninos getting hotter, this is the Modoki revisited and as usual Bob Tisdale has done some good work on this AGW scary scenario:

Anecdotal reports on the weather probably shouldn’t be used to draw conclusions about the climate, but since a number of the reports appear to be in direct contradiction of the data on the climate anomaly map, they may suggest a cause for reasonable doubt of its efficacy. They also reinforce the point made by myself and several others on a number of occasions that no one ever gets to experience climate, just weather. That whatever transpires with the climate now or at any point in the future is unlikely to be detectable in the random noise of the weather wherever you happen to live.

Spector (11:23:42) :
John from CA (09:15:24) : “An international law needs to be passed limiting climate science to colors that do not use Red.”

Unfortunately, I think there is still so much support for the catastrophic global warming hypothesis, especially in international organizations, I expect the possibility of passing any law controlling this type of propaganda is probably quite low.

=================

I agree but its very sad to see Science organizations stoop to this level of sensationalism. As far as Cap and Trade goes, I think we’ll see a major shift in Congress after the election in November. Everyone is fed up with all the hysteria and foolishness.

I’d like to bring attention to this graph, for I do not believe that it has received the attention that it deserves. Just today on CBC radio I heard an interview with Bill McKibbon in which he brought up all the usual warmist assertions about sea level rise, melting arctic ice with, I believe, special mention of the “melting” of 2007 that was really due to wind blowing the ice S into the Atlantic. I’ll alert the program producers of the “warm” arctic waters in 2007, though they seem impervious to the input of factual knowledge that goes against their preconceived dogma.

The WWF is seizing upon the warmer than normal March 2010 temperatures, and spinning it into Global Warming. A local radio station played a soundbite a few days ago of a WWF “scientist” claiming that “trees are now budding two weeks earlier than previously, due to global warming.” This is just another blatant lie by the WWF, who is attributing to global warming what is no more than an unusually warm weather pattern lasting for almost three weeks, in March 2010, in the USA. A local online climate report near my location has reported that March 2010 was 4.7 deg F warmer than normal. An unusual weather pattern? Yes! Global Warming? Bollocks!

[SNIP – another unbelievably foul mouthed comment from a pro AGW New York City coward that won’t give a name, nor a valid email address. The comment is logged, passed on to Roadrunner with your IP address, with a complaint for your abusive and disgusting language. Your IP is permanently banned, and your future comments will now automatically be logged. Have a nice day.]

bubbagyro (14:38:44) :
Cohenite, Dave, et.al.:
Most of us have learned to stop responding to Anus remarks some while ago. He (she, it?) just makes up stuff out of whole cloth, or makes truth sausages (many lies stuffed inside he skin of a truth). It is a waste of time to do the research to refute the Anus missives.

Just a heads up, FWIW. This is just my honest take. He writes as a teenager might, who has tired of the Gameboy.

Isn’t that special, Bubba gets his azz kicked, and then tells his friends not to tangle with the big bad Anu.

That graph was only five years worth of data from some unnamed source. So, let me ask: Really? That 5 year trend explains everything for you? I thought five years was not significant in terms of climate? It is now, or only when smoothing over inconveniences? Do I need to go get a new rule book? Mine is from the winter when all that snow was piling up everywhere, is it obsolete now that the snow is gone?

Kamloops BC had a very nice March but only the days were warm and nights were close to freezing at times. This was a welcome change from last year when I was seriously thinking of moving south after a winter off seeming to do nothing except shoveling my driveway over and over again. Good thing I didn’t since I heard from people in Florida that we were often warmer here than they were this winer. It was rainier than usual but well within normal climate variability for this area.

What I didn’t see were poppies starting to come up in March whereas 10 years ago or so they would start up in late February (and of course die with the first frost). This tells me that the soil temperature is not anywhere close to what it was back then. I’d be doing some recordings with the USB temperature monitors but have to find a source of appropriately sized 3.6 V batteries first:-(

I’ ve got a couple questions concerning that video. The team is supposedly three people, but the video shows three in the water, so who’s shooting the vid? And how did they manage to shoot the people getting in the water and then be there to shoot them getting out on the other side?

A couple of other crucial points; the use of anomalies is a recipe for distortion and manipulation and is possibly most responsible for the AGW hysteria; anomalies are variations from a base period mean; if that base period is in a cool period then anomalies before and after which are in [naturally] warm periods will be distorted and show a false trend.

I couldn’t agree more. This is the problem with statements by agencies that that ice/temps/precipitation levels are above or below normal, when they should state they are above/below the anomaly and state the calculated anomaly period.

It’s true that anomaly information can usually found in the documentation but there is no excuse for the commentary to then go on to describe the data as being above or below normal.

There is of course an added layer of uncertainty in that missing data may have been estimated and form components of the anomaly. If this is poorly done it can distort the entire data set and thus any derived trend.

Finally Anu has a shot at the ‘myth’ that temps have been going down since 1998; explain this Anu:

“They also reinforce the point made by myself and several others on a number of occasions that no one ever gets to experience climate, just weather.”

Dave, it is dangerous way of thinking. When, the next Ice age comes, are
you getting to experience weather or climate? It only needs 5-7 degrees (C) change in global mean temperature – and then the people you refer to will
say, ´’oh it’s so much less than the difference than between early morning and mid-noon any summer day in Texas.

MartinGAtkins; as well as base period taint there is the need to correlate temperature trend beginning and starting points with discernible and verifiable physical events; in that respect Fig 1 from WG1 FAQ3.1 is a travesty;

And easily rebutted;

For an interesting look at temperature trends connected to real physical events David Stocwell’s paper is worth reading:

So, let me ask: Really? That 5 year trend explains everything for you?
It is important not as a “trend”, but because it shows the importance of measuring the ocean to greater depths. The Argo data for the upper 700 meters shows stalled warming. The Argo data for the upper 2000 meters shows continued warming over the same period.
Try to understand why that is important. Currents in the ocean move in 3D – heat mixing can shuffle heat through one layer to another. The movie theater can fill up, even if the number of people in the lobby is constant.

I thought five years was not significant in terms of climate? It is now, or only when smoothing over inconveniences? http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
They’ve been looking at ocean heat content for many decades. Only recently could they look down to 2000m (the new Argo floats).

Do I need to go get a new rule book? Mine is from the winter when all that snow was piling up everywhere, is it obsolete now that the snow is gone?
I don’t think more books will help you – try an energy drink.
You have to be awake when you think about these things. It’s not like watching TV or talking about sports.

Try to understand why that is important. Currents in the ocean move in 3D – heat mixing can shuffle heat through one layer to another. The movie theater can fill up, even if the number of people in the lobby is constant.

0-700 layer is not showing signs of warming because…? The heat is instantly passing this layer and moving deeper into the ocean? And this is an oceanwide phenomenon because…? And the heat will rise up and overthrow the cold world above when…?

I don’t think more books will help you – try an energy drink.
You have to be awake when you think about these things. It’s not like watching TV or talking about sports.

Although you are right, I do get distracted, it does have some similarity to talking about sports. I am trying to keep track of where the goal posts are.

And the 0-2000m layer is showing constant warming because… ? You don’t think the oceans warming worldwide in the upper 2000m because of radiative imbalance caused by CO2 in the atmosphere is important because… ? You have no problems with 2D areas being warmer or cooler in their multi-year heating (Atlantic basin vs. Pacific basin vs. Indian basin, for example), but think it is strange that ocean layers have intricate multi-year heat flow patterns because… ? You can’t visualize well known ocean currents like the thermohaline conveyor belt, carrying heat along the surface for thousands of miles and diving to the depths in one small region of the upper Atlantic basin because… ? It is hard for you to understand that this diving heat doesn’t “instantly” pass this upper ocean layer but flows within a well known ocean vertical current because… ? You think ocean heat that dives to lower depths will never surface at the other end of the closed loop current because… ?

http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/
Maybe the upper 100 meters shows even less long term warming. Or 50 meters. Maybe we should focus on that, and wonder about all that “missing” heat. Maybe the layer from 100m to 200m is cooling, worldwide. Why bother with all the data, when a subset might be more to our liking ?

“They also reinforce the point made by myself and several others on a number of occasions that no one ever gets to experience climate, just weather.”

Dave, it is dangerous way of thinking. When, the next Ice age comes, are
you getting to experience weather or climate? It only needs 5-7 degrees (C) change in global mean temperature – and then the people you refer to will
say, ´’oh it’s so much less than the difference than between early morning and mid-noon any summer day in Texas.

MY bad. I thought from the tone of your comments you were suggesting we all need to get our knickers in a twist over 1-3 degrees of warming globally. If I’d realized you actually had evidence that we are imminently facing 5-7 degrees of global cooling, I’d have been the first in line to saddle up with your alarmist cavalry and fight, like the “600” of old, to the last man to oppose it.

But the trend is not significant. You don’t have thirty years of data. This could be your missing heat, or not. How does heat in the ocean behave at this depth historically?
They already have a 55 year old trend of increasing ocean heat, looking at the upper 700 meters:http://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

Why are there some periods of “constant” heat in this thin upper layer ? Why is there sometimes a large jump in ocean heat in this thin upper layer (2002-2004, 1972-1975, 1995-1997) ? The fact that looking to 2000 meters for one six year section of that 55 year graph shows warming where the 700 m graph does not, is significant in itself.

Sure, it would be nice to have 55 years, or 100 years, of 3000m data. And it would be nice to be a billionaire, too.

The new Argo data looking at the upper 2000m gives a possible explanation for the wide swings in 700m data – heat is being moved vertically, in upwellings and downwellings, that hadn’t been seen before in the instrument data.

The first Argo floats were deployed in late 1999.
The Argo array did not reach its full planned coverage of at least 3000 floats until late 2006. Not all the floats are equal – about 66% dive to at least 1500 meters, and 46% to 2000 meters.

If it is found, as you seem to think, why are Trenberth et al still pondering out loud about where it has gone?
The von Schuckmann research has only found a bit more than half of the “missing” heat.

Trenberth is Director of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado. He has argued repeatedly that they need better measurements of Earth’s climate, to track where all this extra energy being trapped by the CO2 is going. For the oceans, he would like the Argo system to be expanded – bigger array, more floats going deeper. Trenberth et al has already said

They are probably downplaying the von Schuckmann results because the full array was not in place for the six years of the study, and they are emphasizing that better data is still needed – the Argo system is not “finished”.
Of course, when they get the first 10 years of great, high resolution, down to 3000 meter data showing exactly where the radiation-imbalance-extra-heat entering the oceans surface is flowing to, for the entire oceans even under the sea ice,
people like you will say “but that’s only 10 years data. We need 30 years to see the trend”.
Not if every improvement in measuring the oceans continues to show OHC building up and agreeing more and more with the satellite measurements of energy imbalance. This is “improved measurement of an existing trend”.

http://w3.jcommops.org/FTPRoot/Argo/Doc/Argo_new_brochure.pdfProspects for the Future
Many important climate processes take place in the frozen areas of the ocean.
Standard Argo floats cannot operate under ice but acoustically tracked floats
that store the temperature/salinity profiles and transmit them in spring
have been used in the Antarctic.

Argo floats cannot operate over the steep continental slope, nor can the
array adequately measure the oceans’ narrow and swift western boundary
currents. Here autonomous gliders integrated with Argo will help to link the
deep ocean to the boundary currents and continental shelves. The Argo data
system can also handle data from gliders.
Ocean measurements will get better and better – don’t be surprised when they show exactly where all that extra heat is going.

Personally, I’d like to see these under-sea-ice floats. How much of the warming oceans is ending up in the Arctic Ocean ? I bet heat is entering between Iceland and Great Britain…

Why are there some periods of “constant” heat in this thin upper layer ? Why is there sometimes a large jump in ocean heat in this thin upper layer (2002-2004, 1972-1975, 1995-1997) ? The fact that looking to 2000 meters for one six year section of that 55 year graph shows warming where the 700 m graph does not, is significant in itself.

True, it is significant, but offers no answers to the questions you ask yourself.
Sunlight can only penetrate the ocean to 100m, roundabout.

Why is the ocean heat content at 2km important to surface temperature?

Why is the ocean heat content at 2km important to surface temperature?

Why is the ocean heat content at 0.7km important to surface temperature ?
Because the “surface” water is not always the same water – as I said, there are lots of currents in the ocean, in all 3 dimensions.
How did the extra heat get down to 2 km, anyway ?
Because of ocean currents.
Why will this affect surface temperatures ? Because ocean currents form closed loops – heated surface water downwells, heated deep water eventually upwells. To start the loop again.

What happens when the cold water from the oceans depths starts the surface portion of its loop 0.1°C warmer than the last time this water was on the surface ? The SST has gone up.

There are plenty of different loops, of different periods and locations. The pattern of warmer water upwelling will be complicated. Trenberth wants to measure all this in higher 2D resolution, and at greater depths.